


Just Take a Hold of the Hand That Breaks the Fall

by RidleyMocki



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Action at the start then a lot of hanging out then more action at the end, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I know IM SORRY but it WILL BE FINISHED, M/M, Magic, Magic!Adam PArrish, POV Ronan Lynch, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Slow Burn, Supernatural Shenanigans, The Gangsey is all there and care about each other a lot, WIP, background bluesey, like a whole heck of a lot, pynchweek17, snark and sass, superhero au, the Institute is like a cross between the X-men school and the facility in Hellboy i guess, they all have different powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-09 04:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11662086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidleyMocki/pseuds/RidleyMocki
Summary: They weren't even supposed to be at the damn factory. An unsanctioned mission goes awry and Ronan wakes up to realise that Adam's consciousness is somehow in his head. In his dream place, to be precise. But how he got there and what those freaky demon wizards were aiming for is all unclear. As the group struggles to deal with Adam being in a magic coma, and Ronan struggles to deal with the guy he secretly wants being in his most private space, something dark is waiting for its opportunity, and it's coming for them. The Institute never prepared them for this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for Pynch Week 2017 to the prompt 'Superhero AU'. Originally I really wasn't vibing with the AU prompts, couldn't see what to do with it, but I started writing and got SUPER INTO THIS ONE and now it's gotten SO out of hand. This is unfortunately a WIP, but it will absolutely be updated as soon as I have time to work on it. 
> 
> Title is from 'Superman' by Lazlo Bane, because it's literally the most perfect song for this (it's has a superhero theme and mentions tarot cards, for god's sake).
> 
> I hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for the next instalment! <3

It was an accident. They weren’t even supposed to be in the damn factory but as always Gansey had got it in his head that they could help. So they went, the six of them, following their fearless leader into another fucked up situation. Ronan hadn’t liked it at the time and he was furious afterwards. 

Gansey was full of moral principles and platitudes and even though Ronan would follow him to the ends of the earth, he was always going to begrudge reaching the end of the earth just because Gansey made stupid decisions. 

It happened too fast. They were scoping out the factory floor, irked by the archaic symbols painted on the walls, the lines of salt, the broiling pot of luminescent goo in the middle of the room and the next moment, they were under fire. Literal fire. As in balls of fire were being thrown at them as four cloaked figures materialised around them. 

Gansey told Blue to try and turn into one of them, use their power against them, and they were all shocked when she said she couldn’t. Something was stopping her. 

“This is wrong,” Noah said into Ronan’s ear as they ducked for cover. 

“No shit.”

“No,” he said. “There’s something we’re missing.” Ronan frowned at him, but Noah just grew more translucent in his uncertainty until Ronan couldn’t see him at all.

Something small was flung onto the floor opposite them and in the blink of an eye the tiny bee had transformed back into Henry. “Okay,” he groaned and crawled over to them, “that’s literally never happened.”

Across the room Ronan could see Adam crouched behind a machine, palms pressed flat to the ground and eyes closed in concentration. He was obviously trying to reach into the earth, to draw out some power so he could retaliate. Of all of them he was the one best suited to deal with these guys, magic versus magic. But his brow was furrowed and Ronan wondered if he was encountering the wrongness Noah felt.

“Stop this! Stop what you’re doing!” Gansey shouted at the figures, coming out from behind the palette of boxes he’d been hiding behind and forcing as much command into his voice as possible. The force of his power seemed to shake the room, filling it with his will. But the figures didn’t respond to his will the way anyone else would have. That could only mean one thing. Despite the evidence of his eyes and ears Ronan peeked around the corner of the workbench to look at the figures and realised with startling clarity that they were dead. They had to be dead. 

But Gansey wasn’t growing wise to this, flummoxed that they ignored him. The figures had stopped reigning fire down upon them and began to form a circle around the pot. Or the cauldron, Ronan supposed. Voices like wind began to howl in the large room and it sent shivers down his spine. It took a moment for him to realise that they were, in fact, chanting.

“It’s all wrong,” Noah said, voice small beside him though he couldn’t be seen.

Ronan watched, vaguely horrified, as Gansey started walking closer to them, opening his mouth. Before he could do something reckless like piss them off, Ronan sprinted from his spot, around the edge of the room and half-tugged, half-tackled Gansey until they were both behind the palette of boxes again. They peered around the edge.

At the centre of the circle the figures formed, the viscous liquid in the cauldron began to rise up, rolling and writhing in a short spout. Luminescent and bright bloody red. Parts around the edge that were in the air too long began to char and blacken before being sucked back into the melee. It looked powerful, grim, and unnatural. It was something you weren’t supposed to see, like when you shine a torch into your palm and you can see your veins lit up bright red from the other side. Ronan felt sick.

“What the fuck is that thing,” he said.

Gansey looked at him, eyes wide, and Ronan gave him a flat look because that was Gansey’s _maybe we’re in over our heads after all_ look. Ronan could slap him. 

Before he got the chance, though, a scraping sound emanated in the room and Ronan saw Adam moving towards the cauldron and the figures around it, as though pulled from a string around his chest. His back was arched and his toes barely touched the ground, yet still he slid forward at the behest of some invisible force. His gritted teeth and straining arms told Ronan that this was none of his doing and instantly, with a sinking feeling, Ronan ran towards him, shouting. “No!”

He collided with a warm body, frustrated that they stayed upright, and wound his arms around Adam’s waist, digging his heels into the factory floor, willing the movement to stop. “A little help!” He saw flashes of white light a little to the side and realised it was Noah, who was trying to get at the hooded figure before him but couldn’t pass the salt circle in which they stood, his fists pounding against the barrier in bright sparks of energy. He saw Henry virtually disappear and knew he’d be buzzing around somewhere, though god knows to what end. Gansey was studying the symbols that encircled the figures, listening to their strange language as they chanted over and over, eyes ablaze as he tried to work it out, to find a solution. 

Blue came out of the shadows and hit one figure over the head with a pair of bolt cutters. The figure did nothing. Did not sway or startle. It merely extended a hand and with a flick of the wrist Blue went flying into the opposite wall as though the figure had swatted a fly.

“Blue!” Gansey began to move toward her.

“Dick! Figure out how to stop them!” Ronan couldn’t stop he and Adam from moving, he struggled and scraped against the floor, but inch by inch they trailed forward. He saw tears run down Adam’s cheek and feared this might be killing him.

Gansey refocused on his task.

Up close, as they crossed the salt line, Ronan realised these bastards were huge, broad and easily seven foot tall. They were not people. Not even dead people, not really. Their robes were made of shadow as much as anything and when Ronan, dragged behind Adam, was brought into the circle, the temperature dropped so much he gasped.

“I can’t read it!” Gansey shouted. “There are too many languages!”

The red, glowing substance bubbled higher into a column, and no doubt it was commanded by whatever magic these figures were spinning. It rose like a cobra. Ronan struggled and felt his heart lurch into his throat. Gansey looked at them in horror. 

It was rising to meet Adam.

Two things happened at once. 

First, Noah, such as he was, squeezed himself through the gap in the salt line left behind by Ronan’s feet and attacked the nearest figure. Noah wasn’t corporeal on his best day, but he managed to grab at the figure’s hood and drag it down. Underneath was a mass of black; millions of tiny, shiny black dots writhed and slip-slided over each other. Beetles. They scuttled away and regrouped to mimic the opening of a mouth but it was all of them talking. The four figures were a monstrous hive. 

But the reveal of their nature seemed to stun them and the millions of voices grew a little quieter as those from the figure Noah had revealed stopped their chanting. The column of red slime swayed and listed.

Second, the cauldron that held said slime had no fire beneath it, apparently just meant to contain. So there was no danger to a tiny bee inspecting the three feet that held the ancient looking thing upright. At the exact moment the column of liquid felt the loss of some of its chanted support, and the exact moment Adam and Ronan were but a foot away from the edge of the pot, Henry finally managed to remove the screw from one foot of the cauldron, throwing it on the floor beside its two brothers. 

Magic was maintaining the glowing liquid but it was not doing so for the cauldron, and the weight of it instantly made the detached foot slide away. The cauldron tipped, tipped, and fell.

The humming chants of the figures – the beetles – rose to a shrill cry, utter outrage in every note as the red liquid lost its form, sloshing back into its well, and tipped along with the cauldron. Adam still couldn’t move away. Ronan could, but he wasn’t going to. They all watched it fall as if in slow motion, anticipating burns, or curses, or worse.

Instead, the instant the red, writhing liquid touched the ground, heat surrounded them, Ronan’s vision exploded into whiteness, and he was gone.

……………………………………..

When Ronan woke up, he knew he was in the mansion. The walls were white and indistinguishable from a hospital, but the ceiling was too high, the room too large, and through the windows at the far end he could see the heavy grey stone that made up the building’s façade. So they’d made it back. He knew that he was alive, the itch of the cannula in his hand and the throb of his heart assured him. He must have slept for a long time; his body felt disused and shaky.

Oh, and he could feel Adam inside his head.

……………………………………..

Apparently the entire factory had exploded, and when emergency teams got to the site, they could only stand, shocked, at seeing six unscathed teenagers lying unconscious in the middle of the ash and the rubble. Before they could do anything, sleek black vans showed up and took the group away. A medic had to rip Adam’s shirt because he couldn’t pry Ronan’s fingers from it.

……………………………………..

Calla chewed them all out something chronic once they realised Ronan was awake. “This is why we have this program,” she said, icy cold and terrifying. “So that idiot teenagers don’t get themselves killed. What in fiery hell were you _thinking_?!”

“To be fair, we didn’t die,” Blue tried, but shut up at Calla’s venomous look.

“No, you just put your friend in a coma!” The group of them visibly flinched back at that, sending guilty looks over at where Adam lay, still and vacant, across the ward. Ronan stayed lying down, nursing the headache that had been buzzing since he woke. 

Maura pushed a frustrated breath out her nose, mouth pinched, and Ronan watched with some regret as Blue shrunk further into herself. “It may not even be a coma,” Maura said, “we’re not entirely sure what’s happened to Mr Parrish, but as you can imagine, it’s likely not good.”

“There are worse things to be than dead,” Persephone chimed in quietly. She had been sitting on the far windowsill since they’d arrived, the sun making her hair into a halo in a way that contrasted sharply with her words. From the corner of his eye, Ronan saw Noah nod.

“He’s in my head,” he said abruptly. Seven pairs of eyes were suddenly trained on him. “Adam,” Ronan said, “I don’t know how, but he’s in my head, I can feel him there.”

“You mean you’ve got a psychic bond with him?” Gansey asked, perking up from where he’d been sitting small and guiltily to the side.

“No,” Ronan snarled. “I mean he’s literally in my head. His mind, his consciousness, or whatever.” Maura and Calla edged a little closer to him, Persephone stayed where she was but studied him. “I can’t talk to him. I think he’ll be in my dream place.”

The witches shared some alarmed but private looks among them, but Blue, the younger and less cautious version of the three of them, was outright shocked. “ _How?_ ”

“Fucked if I know,” he said quietly.

They were silent a moment, the news weighing heavy and confusedly on everyone.

“Worse things,” Persephone repeated, half to herself.

“We need to discuss this with the board, maybe call in help,” Maura said suddenly, and Calla and Persephone nodded at her. To the rest of them she said, “Under no circumstances are you to try and fix this by yourselves, understood? But Mr Lynch, if you notice any change in the presence in your mind, you are to notify us immediately.”

“Mum–“ Blue started, but Maura threw her a discouraging look.

“You and I will be having a separate conversation about this, Blue.” She sighed. “For now, just be with your friends.”

And with that the three of them moved to exit the room. The Deans of the Institute, their wardens and guardians – _They’re not witches, Ronan, shut up_ – usually left their wards feeling reassured or encouraged. But the mood was too sombre, the absence of one among them too obvious. All they felt was unsure.

Persephone ducked quickly over to Adam’s bed and deposited something on his bedside table before joining her partners. When she moved away, Ronan saw that it was a flower from the garden, a length of morning glory ivy still winding around its stem. Ronan felt sick.

“So a nature boy gets entangled with a snake,” Calla muttered as they left the room, annoyed, “how very biblical.” 

The words were still rattling in Ronan’s head when he growled at the others to leave him alone. Without a word, they did.

……………………………………..

“I’m so sorry,” Henry said to him later, horrified and young, once Ronan was out of bed and they’d deemed it necessary to _discuss this_ , “I’m so, so sorry, I thought it would stop them.”

“You did what you could,” Gansey said.

“Well it wasn’t enough,” Ronan turned to Gansey. “If it wasn’t for your fucking inferiority complex dragging us everywhere, this wouldn’t have happened!” The hurt look on Gansey’s face was gratifying. Ronan felt mean today.

“Hey! You agreed to go into the factory, no one made you.” Blue got into his space, the bruise across her cheek swelled, and angry like herself.

“It was a terrible idea,” Noah said, his skin milky white and his face sad. “They wanted us to go. It was a trap and we should have known.” Blue glared daggers at him, but couldn’t argue.

“Look, I think we need to focus on helping Adam,” Gansey continued, diplomatic, “arguing isn’t going to do any good.”

“Really?” Ronan sneered. “Because I already feel much better. And why the fuck should I believe you know what’s best for him?”

“Because regardless of what you think I’m still the team leader! And our efforts are better spent constructively than mouthing off.”

“He’s inside my head!” Ronan shouted. His rage coursed through his veins like fire, and he couldn’t stop it, wasn’t sure he wanted to. “You think your history books or your money are going to help? They fucking dropped him inside my forest and you think _you_ can help?” Ronan grabbed Gansey by the collar and hauled him against the wall. “You think they didn’t get exactly what they wanted?!”

From behind him, he heard a voice. It was Gansey’s, but not. As he looked at the Gansey in front of him the voice behind yelled, “Calm down!” 

Ronan felt the command and the will behind it shudder through his body as he dropped Gansey to the floor, all his limbs relaxing as the anger settled lower in him, subdued. 

When he turned, he saw Blue morph back from Gansey’s form to her own, and she looked at him apologetically. “I know you’re angry. But you’ll regret that later,” she said quietly. 

“Don’t ever pull that shit with me again, Sargent,” Ronan growled, and glanced at where Adam still slept. Or his body slept. They weren’t sure. Adam lay still on one of the beds, in this room made to mimic an actual hospital ward, pale and thin and awful. 

But the spark Ronan could feel in the back of his mind wasn’t as fragile as the boy looked. It was bright and alive, full of the will and power that made Adam the magician. But that spark should be in his body and not in Ronan’s fucked up mind.

“He’s in there,” Noah said suddenly, looking at Ronan, and cocked his head to where Adam lay. “He’s in his body, but he’s also in you. In your dreams, at least. Point is, he’s not fading.” Noah had a thing about death. It came from being a dead thing. He could sense it on others, could sometimes even sense what was causing it. The EMTs that moonlighted at the Institute and weren’t irked by Noah’s presence sometimes let him tag along in their work. Staying invisible, he’d go to emergencies and whisper in their ear who was close to death or what was threatening them. Sometimes the height of Noah’s ability to reassure was to tell someone ‘life is still here’. Ronan was comforted by it, that Adam wasn’t totally separate from his body. 

“I tried commanding him back but it didn’t work,” Gansey said quietly, “I don’t think he can hear me.”

“Doesn’t that break your word to him?” Ronan said. Gansey had promised Adam when they met that he’d never control him, never give him an order he couldn’t refuse. It was a point of tension in their friendship that Adam knew Gansey was always capable of it, anyway.

“I hope that given the circumstances, he’d forgive me.”

“I’d be hedging your bets on that one,” Blue said ruefully, and Gansey winced at her. For a guy who only wanted people to be themselves around him, to have the power to make them want whatever he wanted was a heavy burden.

Ronan nodded slowly. “I guess I should go take a nap then.” He shook his head, so tired all of a sudden, and walked past them all, the anger beginning to bubble again. He didn’t glance back at them or Adam as he left the room. 

……………………………………..

The thing was, they were told not to pull shit like this. They’re teenagers, all of them. Some were eighteen already but it hardly mattered when they followed each other around like they did. “Under no circumstances are you to go on unapproved or unassigned missions,” Calla had said over and over in the years they’d been here. Everyone that came to the Institute wanted to play the big leagues, wanted to prove themselves. But the superheroes you see on TV have been at it for years, are in complete control of their abilities. It’s the reason you came here, so they’d teach you how to be ready for that. If you still had to abide by curfew and hand in homework on Monday, you just shouldn’t be fighting psychopaths and megalomaniacs and creatures of the night.

It wasn’t entirely Gansey’s fault. It wasn’t Henry’s. They’d all gone along. But somewhere down the line they’d failed each other or the Institute had failed them, because no matter what the freaky bug people were doing in a warehouse at night, the six of them shouldn’t have been there.

By the time Ronan finally fell asleep, staring at the white ceiling of his room and garish music blasting through his headphones, his rage had reached boiling point again. To slip into a dream was like slipping into a cooling bath. But it was one he usually enjoyed alone.

……………………………………..

“You didn’t punch Gansey did you?” Adam said to him as soon as Ronan came to. It was night time in the forest and the first thing he saw was the brilliant galaxies above him between the latticed tree branches. When he hauled himself up and turned to face Adam – relief already washing through him – it took a moment to believe the figure before him wasn’t an imposter.

Intellectually Ronan understood that Adam had magic, so in the way that all magic draws on a similar source, it made sense that Adam was somehow connected to the magical dream forest that Ronan had in his head. But the way the forest suited Adam was startling, like he belonged here. He wore only a ratty pair of jeans, toes digging into the grass. His skin, the expanse of his chest and arms, looked pearly white in the dream moonlight, and his eyes shone. If this was what Adam looked like without the constraints of his body – the Magician in his true form – then no one at the Institute understood him, at all.

“You have leaves in your hair,” Ronan said, dumbly. Adam looked like something born in this forest. Lacking solidity or maybe just reality. 

“This place keeps putting them there,” he said with a grimace, and ran his fingers through his hair to dislodge them. He smiled. “I think it likes me.”

Ronan heard a whisper rustle through the trees. _Yes. Yours. Ours._ He swallowed, hard.

“That’s one way to put it.” 

They regarded each other for a moment, before Adam said, “So? Did you punch him?”

Ronan snorted. “Nah, his guard dog stopped me. Got close, though.”

“You know, anyone who wasn’t used to you and Blue’s relationship would think you hated her.”

“She’s more fun when she’s mean, is all.”

“You think that about everybody,” Adam laughed, and walked past Ronan to break through the trees. Ronan followed, and they came to the bank of a wide pool. The still water reflected the stars overhead almost perfectly, making it look as though if they only took a step, they’d fall right into the universe.

They sat down, watching the water. Adam’s arm brushed against his and the warmth of it was reassuring; the life apparent before Ronan’s eyes wasn’t just him dreaming it. Adam was really here.

“How are you being so calm about this?” He said quietly.

Adam rolled his bottom lip between his teeth and thought. “The things I would worry about when I’m awake. They’re not here. Nothing’s hurting me here. I’m not hungry or cold. My magic doesn’t feel like it’s going to burst out of my chest and blow something up. The only thing is that I’d just started to feel lonely – then you showed up.” He knocked his shoulder against Ronan’s.

“Your magic is easier here?” It was well known at the Institute that Adam didn’t have perfect control. His will was powerful but his magic was a force that sometimes acted without his permission, where it perceived a threat, or when he was overwhelmed. Ronan remembered the times the skin on Adam’s hands had cracked from trying to keep his magic inside his body, a body that did its best to contain it but was ill-suited to the job. That night, Ronan had dreamt up a cream that would heal the skin, and had given it to Adam the next day. They never spoke of it, but the wear on his body always went away sooner these days.

“When I’m awake,” Adam said carefully, “my focus is always on keeping it inside. I’m always aware of the inside, outside difference. Where my body ends, where the world starts. Here, though?” Adam turned and smiled at him wondrously. “Magic is everywhere here. And I don’t exactly have my body, so… Where is my body, by the way?”

“Lying in the medical wing, going to waste.”

Adam grinned. “And you have better ideas for what it could be doing, Lynch?”

“Shut up.” Shit. This Adam was still Adam, still capable of being a total dick. “It could be housing _you_ , is what it could be doing,” Ronan growled.

Adam frowned suddenly, looking at him, and straightened to face him. “Ronan. Are you uncomfortable with me being here?” He asked seriously.

Ronan thought about it, had been thinking about it since he woke up that morning; thought about the one person from whom he had the most to hide, being inside his head. He lifted his gaze to Adam’s and held it, steady and sure. “No.”

Adam looked surprised. “No?”

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re an ass sometimes but…I trust you. I’d rather it was you.” And, he had a sneaking suspicion that whatever Adam discovered in this place, he probably already knew.

It was clear from his face that Adam questioned that decision, but he didn’t protest. He was getting better at believing he deserved the good things people gave to him. “Good,” he said. They lapsed into silence and watched the water.

“That’s the other reason I didn’t freak out, you know?” Adam said after several minutes, and Ronan raised an eyebrow at him. “I knew the second I opened my eyes I wasn’t just in some forest; I was in _yours_. Probably stupid but, I knew I was safe here, because of that.”

Ronan didn’t dare reply, because it was true. He could feel the way this place loved Adam. Loved him because Ronan loved him. And he was reeling from the idea that in any capacity he could make someone like Adam Parrish feel safe. 

Instead, he turned away and lay back on the grass, eyes on the stars. After a moment, Adam joined him. 

They talked a little more, about their friends, about the fallout at the Institute because of what they’d done. They didn’t talk about how to fix this and get Adam back in his body. For now it was enough that he was okay. They were going over Latin verb conjugations for their next class, the forest rippling with pleasure at hearing its language, when Ronan began to doze off.

“Good luck,” he heard Adam whisper.

When he woke up again to his white walls – the transition to wakefulness easier than it had been for months – his head hurt, but he could swear he still felt a hand on his shoulder.

……………………………………..

“Adam is in my dream forest. Cabeswater. I just slept and he was there, we had entire conversations and he appears as though he has his body, even if he doesn’t, like he’s physically in the forest.” After waking, Ronan had fed Chainsaw, listened to the worst music he owned, changed his clothes, and strode right into the Deans’ office. As much as he didn’t want to, he had to tell the witches about his dream.

“Cabeswater is keeping him safe?” Persephone asked lightly, but Ronan caught the relief that was badly hidden on all their faces. The three women moved away from the large table that took up the centre of the room – cards strewn across it, bowls of water and handheld mirrors, an array of encouraging herbs – and came to stand before him. Even though the entirety of the inside of the building had been renovated to be modern, state of the art facilities, somehow the Deans had managed to make their large office space seem antiquated, with books lining the wall and assorted clashing textiles. Wards of the Institute that came to talk to the women wouldn’t be blamed for thinking they’d walked into an especially bohemian library.

Ronan nodded.

“Which is to say,” Calla said with a raised brow, “that _you’re_ keeping him safe.”

“You got a problem with me, miss?” Ronan snarled at her.

“Calla,” Maura reprimanded, just as Calla opened her mouth to reply. She turned to Ronan “I suppose it makes a sort of sense. Magic seeks magic, after all.”

“Magic can also screw with other things that are magic,” Calla said.

“That seems to be the way this started, but I don’t think there’s much danger of that now. Is there something you need from us right now, Mr Lynch? A way we can help? Other than us figuring out how to fix this.”

Ronan shook his head. “It’s fine. I think Adam’s treating it like a vacation.” He thought back to the easy smiles Adam had worn when they talked. He hadn’t looked pinched like he usually did, and Ronan couldn’t begrudge him enjoying his reprieve from the real world.

“But _you’re_ alright?” Calla asked. Ronan looked at her and she held his gaze, her dark eyes sincere. Of everyone at the Institute he and Calla were probably at each other’s throats the most. Blue had joked one day that it was because they were in a competition to see who could be more of an asshole, and in a way she was right. People that were similar in personality were always going to clash. But that they were similar in their sharp edges also meant that they were similar elsewhere. They cared. They cared a hell of a lot. On that they could agree, and there was no point lying to someone that understood you well because they were like you.

There was also no point in lying because the three women in front of him were fucking psychic. Such was his luck.

“I’m not entirely okay with the idea, no, but at least I know what’s going on,” he said truthfully. “And there’s not much you can do out here to help me in my dreams.”

“And your nightmares?” Maura pressed. 

“They won’t hurt him,” he said with certainty. It was common knowledge around the Institute that Ronan had things in his head that no one wanted to see the light of day. But they had seen it all the same, more than once, before he got better at not accidentally pulling things into reality. He hadn’t seen any of the creatures for a while now, but they’d only ever wanted to hurt him, discriminately, a testament to his relationship with himself at the time. By contrast, Adam was untouchable. Inviolable. “He’s safe, there.”

The three of them nodded in that eerie way they had, that came from souls being arranged very close together. “If you should need anything – if _Adam_ needs anything – let us know,” Maura said. “But I must stress, again, do not go looking for the answer to this. You’re more in control of the situation than the others because it’s your own mind, but Ronan, don’t mess with this arrangement until we know how to do so safely. This is… extremely delicate.”

“I take it none of you are sure how this is going to work out, then?” he said, raising an unimpressed brow. The Deans of the Institute were such because they were powerfully good at knowing what was needed, and what couldn’t be changed. Their combined talents in clairvoyance usually gave them the upper hand, and they were rarely surprised. The fact that none of them seemed to know what to do now was unnerving, and Ronan felt worry creep up his spine and into his throat. 

“Our scrying is coming out blank,” Persephone said, looking at him apologetically. “We believe that whatever force did this to the two of you is also blocking our sight.”

“I’m afraid that this isn’t just the aftermath of something,” Maura said, “it’s more like a beginning.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Ronan sighed, scraping a hand over his brow. The warm hum of Adam’s consciousness was still there at the back of his mind, but now it just made it harder to forget what they’d done to him. For once, no one said anything about his language. “I want to be kept in the loop. I want to be able to tell him what’s going on.”

“When we know, you’ll know,” Calla said easily, the others nodding in agreement.

He looked over Maura’s shoulder out the wide window, savouring the feeling of handing a problem onto someone else. Most of the time he wanted control over things, but this, this made him need to give it away. The bright spark in his mind weighed heavier and heavier on him. With a nod and a grimace, he left the room.

In the hallway a minute later, a small hand grasped his arm, and he turned. Persephone had followed him out.

“Don’t forget to say hello to him,” she said, the whimsical upturn to her mouth never failing.

“From you? When I dream?” It seemed a bizarrely obvious thing to be reminded of.

“No,” she said, and moved her hand down to grip his, kindly. “Don’t forget to visit him in the ward. His body. Don’t forget that he’s usually whole.”

Ronan’s body relaxed under her grip, feeling the comfort of a private understanding form between them. “That’s why you left the flower,” he said quietly.

She nodded, the movement rippling down her white hair. “He’s not just in your head. He’s in two places at once. When he remembers that, I’m sure he’d like to know you never forgot.”

Before he could respond, Persephone turned and moved down the hall to return to the office, her gait floaty and unreal as always. Ronan stood there longer, deep in thought.

……………………………………..

Adam was one of the ones at the Institute whose power toed the delicate line between gift and curse. His powers manifested out of anger and self-preservation, out of surviving a home life that he rarely spoke about. They were ancient, too. Some powers were modern, only possible because of how industry or technology had developed. Some were regular, comic book material. Some, though, reminded people that humanity was a temporary arrangement. Adam, particularly, was connected to the earth and the constant feedback loop of time itself, could manipulate reality by asking the universe to do things for him, by building a relationship with something incomprehensibly large and primal. In short, it was magic, the kind that people were burned for, once. 

A lot of powers were like party tricks, people smiled and were entertained. Adam’s magic made the room fall silent.

His power scared people because it was a great rumbling thing under their feet, or the electric smell in the air before rain. It was the suggestion of something enormous and all-consuming. But Adam himself was a wonder all his own. He wanted people to like him and revere him as often as he wanted to not be seen at all. He was brilliant, dedicated, and carried himself like he’d stuck his chin out at the world on the day he was born and he was still waiting for the punch. 

Most of the students at the Institute had noticed him during the lunch time that Clary accidentally blew a corner of the roof out from the building. The rubble of brick and tile had fallen directly over where Adam was standing in the yard, but instead of crushing him, it had arced over him and sailed down like rain off the edge of an umbrella, to land in a perfect circle all around his feet. It hadn’t stirred a single hair, but it was the casual look Adam cast to the rubble and the way he calmly walked back inside that had people parting for him in the hallways for days after.

Ronan had noticed him weeks before in their first class together. A blonde boy who didn’t meet anyone’s eyes had laid out his math textbook at the top of his table, and when he realised that he couldn’t lay it flat without creasing the spine, propped one side up with other books. But it meant he had to hold the pages against the raised side, or they’d slip and fall, and Ronan spent the majority of that class watching Adam’s index finger tap against the edge of the pages, watching his thumb glance back and forth over the page as he held the book open for the duration of the class. Noticing that action had made Ronan feel like he’d stumbled upon one of Adam’s secrets, and he couldn’t look away. The next day, Gansey showed up to their lunch spot with Adam sheepishly in tow, and Ronan had been done in. 

Adam fit in naturally with their group; they were all outsiders, even among the weird and unusual cohort at the Institute. When it got to their final year and one of their classes became the ‘group missions’ the Institute organised to help get potential heroes ready for future team work, it made sense that the faculty staff put the six of them together, Gansey at the helm. Gansey was rather like their leader, anyway, their love for him akin to a knight’s loyalty, and they worked well together on the small reconnaissance jobs and clean-up missions the Institute assigned them. But their group had haphazardly fallen together out of mutual exasperation, humour, and the feeling that there was something deeply suspicious about following the rules. A night like the one at the factory, the one that had started this mess, was inevitable. 

Ronan wondered how long it would take him to miss seeing Adam in the real world. Not long, he thought.

……………………………………..

Ronan sat on one of the stone benches in the gardens, letting the chill of the breeze ground him as it whistled through his t-shirt and raised the hairs on his arms. The Institute had adopted all kinds of new age and pop psychology methods of helping its students find control. The gardens were a place of reflection, the pebble labyrinth in the middle was used as a mindfulness exercise, though whenever anyone walked it they just looked to Ronan like zombies. The lawns that stretched between the rows of flowers were used for Yoga and Tai Chi. Anything to help keep the hormone-fuelled and emotion-high pupils from accidentally blowing something up.

Ronan rarely used the gardens. A lot of his training happened in the gym in the west wing, a string of helpless punching bags serving to work out his aggression and leave his mind clear. The exercise made him feel strong and secure and helped with the insomnia. Turns out that when your dreams could kill you, your subconscious is wary about sleeping at all. 

But he didn’t have much anger to work out, right now. Adam had been in his head for two days and Ronan had only slept once in that time. He was tired. He was feeling something close to grief for their situation. He wanted to sleep, but he didn’t know what to tell Adam when he got there. 

“Hey,” Blue said from behind him, and he didn’t turn as she came to sit beside him on the bench. Ronan eyed the jacket she was wearing, the body of it a regular denim, but one arm was the red knitted sleeve of an old jumper while the other was a kind of fancy metallic tapestry. Blue’s creations were weird but so was she and they oddly worked for her, though Ronan would never say it. She looked out over the flowers and pulled away a bit of hair that the breeze dislodged from the bright pink clip holding it back. “Mum says you spoke to him,” she said.

Ronan nodded. “I guess I should’ve told you lot about that.”

Blue shrugged, unaffected, but she kept her gaze carefully away from him. “Maybe. It’s your head. You can do what you want about it.”

“Very diplomatic of you, Sargent.”

“Not really,” she finally turned her head, meeting his eyes. “It’s not just Adam that’s caught up in this. You are, too. I know that, and you don’t have to tell us shit if you don’t want to.”

Ronan almost smiled at her. Every now and again he was reminded why they were friends. “How’re the others?”

“Well,” she said, sucking in a breath, “Noah made Adam a get well card and then got upset when the nurses cleaned a truly disgusting amount of glitter off of the table by his bed–“ Ronan huffed a laugh at that “–Henry feels guilty as hell and keeps saying he’s going to move to Reykjavik where he intends to live his life as a bee forever. Gansey’s been trying to map out the writing that was all over the factory so he can translate it and figure out what happened. He’s not talking to me.” This last part was said with a note of hurt that Blue tried to hide, but Ronan caught it anyway.

“Don’t take it too hard. You’re just distracting.” Blue looked at him with a raised brow and Ronan scoffed. “You ‘make him quiet’, or whatever. He needs his mind to be going a hundred miles an hour for him to work and you don’t help.”

She nodded, but grumbled, “Still, he could throw me a damn bone so I know he’s okay.”

“If he’s busy, he’s fine,” Ronan said with certainty. They lapsed into silence, watching the shadows of the clouds pass over the lawns. Ronan felt his eyes grow heavy and jolted back to wakefulness with Blue looking at him askance.

“Why won’t you sleep? Won’t you see him if you do?” She wrapped her arms tighter around herself and pinned him with a frown.

“That’s the damn problem. What the fuck do I say to him? We’re just supposed to hang out like normal and pretend like none of this is happening?”

“If that’s what he wants. What you want.”

Ronan grimaced. “All I can do in there is keep him company. You know that’s not exactly my specialty.” 

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Blue said with a small laugh, “Adam always seems pretty pleased with your company. You two are weird but it’s a good weird, when you’re together… Worse comes to worse you can always just make out with him.”

Ronan spun his head to look at her, eyes wide, shocked. He couldn’t decide between fear and anger. “What the _fuck_ , Sargent.” Blue was looking at him with a private, teasing smile, a spark in her eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d sat down. 

“I’m just saying, maybe there’s something in the fact that it’s you and him, going through this.” She nudged him with her elbow and laughed when he lightly punched her arm. Why were they friends, again? Ronan was struggling to remember.

“You’re a shithead sometimes, you know that?” he groused. 

Her grin only widened.

“Go talk to your boy,” Blue said after a moment, giving him a soft but imploring look. “I promise you, even if you don’t say a damn thing, he’ll be glad to see you.” She bumped their shoulders together and then stood, walking back to the mansion and leaving Ronan with his thoughts.

The need to not disappoint was strong and unkind to him. It sat wrong in his chest, Ronan being the one who so consistently didn’t give a damn what people thought. But he felt the weight of the time he’d already wasted lie heavily on his shoulders, causing them to droop along with his eyelids. If he kept Adam waiting any longer that would be more disappointing than him showing up. 

He rose and started back towards the house.

He needed to dream.

……………………………………..


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done for Pynch Week 17 to the prompt 'dreamscape,' because I originally wanted to do a painting for the 'northern lights' prompt but I ran out of time to finish it up how I wanted, and the next part of this fic fit coincidentally well for the prompt. So here, have 3.5k of pynch hanging out in a dream.
> 
> This fic is still will be updated and continued as soon as I actually write the thing. I'm still super hyped for the plot I've got worked out so that will be soon, promise.
> 
> Thank you so SO much for reading, and I hope you enjoy it.

As long as Ronan could remember, there’d been the forest. When he was small his mother would praise him for having a nap in the afternoon and Ronan would insist that he’d done no such thing, that he’d gone exploring and _look, look at the leaves_. All he got were patient smiles and he didn’t understand until he was older that not everyone went somewhere else when they dreamed. Cabeswater, as the forest called itself, hadn’t made him feel Other; it had made him feel safe.

After his father died and he’d figured out that he was different – after he had the Institute to give him the specifics of _how_ he was different – Ronan had wondered if his parents knew the whole time, and what kind of thought process lead a parent to not telling their kid that they had powers. That not everyone could pull things out of dreams. 

Then he’d found out his father had had the same power, and hadn’t helped him, hadn’t guided him. In some moments he’d be shaking with rage and hurt at his father for that and, not wanting to be angry at his father – because Ronan loved him and could never tell him that ever again – it had just left him angry at himself. Another box ticked on a list of how to effectively perform self-loathing. 

There was a new nightmare that came into being from that anger. The forest had hated doing that to him, bringing the creature to life to hurt him. It had hated watching as the nightmare scratched at Ronan’s arms, shrieked its abuse. It was pained to let him go back to the world alone and cold and bloody. But on some level it was what Ronan had asked for, and the forest couldn’t refuse him. 

It loved him; it could not refuse him. 

There was a frightful amount of potential in being able to dream an object, pull it into the world and have it work as you meant it to, every time. There was obligation and responsibility there that Ronan wanted nothing to do with. He wondered if his ancestors, other dreamers along his bloodline, had been afforded a small mercy when they had to keep their power hidden. How beneficial it was to present yourself as unremarkable, so no one thought you were something to be used. 

His father had been a black market trader, a businessman whose business got him killed. But Ronan lived in a world of heroes, of civic duty and the global community, of living for others’ needs. 

Ronan had never saved a life, and he’d always said he never wanted to. Doing things like that made you public property, and Ronan could only ever be his own master.

But, now, as he watched Adam’s body lie still and ghostly, and his nose crinkled at the smell of the bleach they used to keep the infirmary’s linoleum floor clean, Ronan wondered if he hadn’t done it already, by accident. 

What if, the night of the factory, Adam wasn’t meant to make it out alive? 

Ronan touched the flower Persephone had left, brushing a finger over its browning petals. The corner of his mouth quirked up at Noah’s card; he’d drawn Adam in pencil with a crown of flowers in his hair and covered the whole thing in glitter. The inside said _I know you’re not dead, so there’s really no excuse for being this dramatic. Wake up soon. <3._ Adam’s eyelids didn’t flutter at all, and his chest rose steady and even like it wasn’t him doing it. Ronan could see the blue of his veins sprawl over his wrists, stretch over the inside of his elbow. 

What if Adam was supposed to die and Ronan had saved him? Just because, for a split second, he’d thought _No_ , and the forest had listened.

Ronan rubbed a hand down his face. “I swear to god if you hit me when I get in there, I’m not helping you with Latin for a month.” He’d be within his rights, though. 

Persephone had told him that Adam was still whole, but the body lying in front of him was unrecognisable. Noah had said that Adam wasn’t dead, but he may as well have been, for all that this body’s cheeks were hollow and his muscles slack. No one ever really understands, until you see it for yourself, how much a dead body doesn’t look like the person that once lived. 

He pushed a frustrated breath out of his nose. “Don’t be mad,” he said to Adam, and stepped over to the vacant hospital bed next to Adam’s. He lay down, for once not quieting his mind with over-loud music; something about how long he’s delayed this made him think he didn’t deserve the comfort. 

Ronan traced the shape of the ceiling with his eyes, the hazy shadows left by an unenthusiastic grey light coming through the windows. He turned his head and traced the shape of Adam’s nose, the dip before his top lip, and wondered if Adam had come to the same conclusion; that him winding up in Cabeswater had been a last ditch effort to preserve his life. _It’s more like a beginning_ , Maura had said. But if the beginning was meant to have started with Adam dying, Ronan hated to think about the middle or the end. 

Despite being by his side, despite having all of Adam within his reach, Ronan went to sleep afraid.

……………………………………..

 

“I was beginning to think you forgot the way,” Adam said when Ronan came to. This time, Ronan was already leaning against a tree, and had to peek through the low hanging branches to see Adam where he stood in a little clearing. It was still night. Or, it was night again. He wasn’t sure.

“What?” He ducked under the branches and stepped closer. Adam still looked a little unreal, but there was a frown between his brows now that had been absent the last time.

“Nothing.” It was said low and frustrated. Adam ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “That insomnia still getting to you, Lynch?”

Ronan’s mouth twisted with regret. He should’ve come sooner. “Not exactly. Look, I didn’t mean to leave you in the lurch–“

“Whatever. It’s just. It’s been night time all the time, here, okay? And I don’t even know how long I’ve been here, and for some reason the one person who can contact me hasn’t been doing that so, what, were you busy?” He raised his brows at Ronan, looking like he was torn between genuinely wanting Ronan to give him a good excuse, and wanting to see him admit that he’d just selfishly chosen not to come. 

Ronan wasn’t a liar. “No. I was just being an idiot,” he said quietly, and shoved his hands into his pockets. The breeze picked up, uncomfortably cold, and Ronan knew it was because the forest was reacting to his distress. His completely ridiculous distress, because shit, he was never like this. He cleared his throat. “You’ve been here five days. I was passed out for three, and it’s been two since then.”

Adam’s frown grew deeper and he looked away. “Feels longer.” Ronan wondered if maybe time worked differently in the forest; maybe one of his days was several for Adam. He didn’t want to believe it. Adam curled his arms around himself, one hand resting around his neck, and Ronan watched as Adam’s thumb pressed behind his ear. With a sniff he seemed to gather himself, “Make the sun come up?”

Ronan hadn’t even considered that possibility yet. That, just as he could dream things up to take back to the world, he might be able to dream things to be better for Adam. But he hadn’t even begun to ask the forest to raise the sun when, immediately, it was doing so. The sky lightened enough that the shadows stopped being contrasted with silver-white moonlight and became instead the eerie blue of the early morning. It showed up the circles under Adam’s eyes, made him look vaguely skeletal and Ronan wondered if it did the same for himself. After a minute, a burnt orange light pierced through the trees and landed right across Adam’s cheek, as though he’d been splashed with the brightest paint. The change was so stark that Ronan realised he’d been staring without wavering all that time, and he abruptly moved his gaze onto the horizon, instead. He didn’t think about why Adam had been looking back.

That was when he remembered the quickness of the forest to respond to the wish, and realised it hadn’t been his own, not really. “I didn’t do that,” he said wonderingly.

“What do you mean?” Adam frowned. “You had to.”

“Well I didn’t. I didn’t think it, I just heard you say it. It listened to you.” 

“But, it didn’t when you weren’t here. I asked it to do stuff when you were gone and it didn’t.” Adam seemed to consider it for a moment, eyes growing distant the way that was usual when he was working on a hard math problem or trying to translate a passage. “Maybe it’s only if we’re both here.”

_Yes_. The forest whispered in Ronan’s ear. _Magic maker. Magic wielder_. 

“Well,” he groused, “that’s just great.” He realised too late that Adam hadn’t heard the Latin words, and might think Ronan was grumbling about him. But when he looked Adam was fighting a smile, eyes bright. Ronan rolled his eyes at him and the smile won.

“Sorry,” Adam said, sun glancing off his teeth, before he sobered some. “And sorry about before, I just– I guess some worries came back to me, since I saw you. Or I got new ones, I guess. Point is, you shouldn’t have to pop in just to keep me happy.”

Before he tangled himself in an argument about his willingness on that subject, Ronan snorted garishly and smirked at him, instead. “Stop. Hate to break it to you, Parrish, but I’m usually more of an asshole than you and that’s not changing now.”

Gratifyingly, Adam actually laughed. “Jesus, is that your version of an apology?” Ronan raised a brow at him. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll take it. It’s just, if you ever want to workshop that you let me know.”

“Fucking Orla and her fucking workshops,” he groused, scowling even through the second round of Adam’s easy laughter.

“Come on,” Adam said after a moment, and walked past him to duck through the trees. 

They walked silently through the vegetation and the streams of light, stepping over fallen branches, circling around the occasional anthill or spider web. Adam wore an expression like he was very quietly pleased by everything in this place. Like he was pleased to see every leaf, every dust mote in the air. Or maybe he was just amused at the fact that even a magical dream forest had gross bits and disarray. It was Ronan’s dream place, though, he should’ve expected a little disorder.

“I gotta ask,” Ronan said when he was sure he’d lost track of how far they’d gone, “you found a pair of jeans all the way out here but you couldn’t manage a shirt?”

Adam, ahead of him by a few steps, threw a grin over his shoulder. “I woke up in this. Is it distracting you, Lynch?”

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, ignoring that entirely. 

Adam shrugged. “I don’t really get cold here, or warm, it’s actually kind of difficult for me to feel anything properly. Which is irritating”

Alarmed, Ronan stopped and pulled at Adam’s elbow to get him to turn. “What do you mean? Are you– what does that mean?”

“Don’t freak out,” Adam rolled his eyes, “I can still feel, I just… It’s like when you’re really tired and you’re just so in your own head that, I don’t know, real stuff doesn’t feel real. I _know_ that it’s cold, I just don’t _feel_ cold.” He pulled away and continued walking. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Ronan called out after him, and followed. It sounded awful, actually. Ronan knew that part of Adam’s training at the Institute was in grounding himself, using mindfulness techniques to make himself feel like he was actually in the world instead of letting him dissociate away into his own head. Adam could scry like the witches could, but too much time spent in such a cerebral state made him slip into it again a little too easily, and that’s when his magic would take over. So he used sensations, the more stark the better, to reattach himself to reality. Rough fabrics helped, like the itchy wool of their uniform sweater. A scrap of coarse sandpaper in Adam’s pocket. The nib of a pen pressing harder and harder into the pad of a finger.

When he was in the mood to be a little shit, Adam would reach up and scrub his hand over Ronan’s buzzed hair, feeling the prickle of it. When Ronan swatted him away with a grumble, he’d laugh and say “Shh, I need it, help a guy out,” and go to do it again.

Ronan didn’t understand how Adam could be so calm here, if his sensations were really that dulled. Or maybe not dulled, just intellectual as opposed to subjective. Wasn’t he drifting away, here? 

It didn’t sit right with him and so Ronan asked, in his mind, screamed it into his thoughts: _Make him feel_. 

The breeze picked up for a moment and stirred the leaves, hard. In front of him, Adam abruptly stopped, his back rigid. Ronan was seized with the sudden worry that maybe he’d overstepped. Adam never took kindly to anyone messing with his head, and maybe this qualified as messing. After a moment, however, Adam turned and looked back at Ronan with wide eyes.

Ronan quirked a brow. “Better?”

Adam stared at him for a moment, then swallowed, and nodded. They continued on without a word, as Ronan tried to parse the significance of that stare. He thought, tentatively, that it was similar to what happened so often at the Institute, when one person realised with full forces the nature of another’s power. It was a moment of wonder. Ronan tried not to let it get to his head.

Eventually, they came to a clearing with a small rise in the middle, not quite a hill, but enough to stretch one’s legs on the way up. Ronan had fallen a little behind, as Adam pushed on, wary of not making his company overbearing or unpleasant, given it was all Adam had to choose from. When he broke through the trees Adam was already standing at the top of the rise, the sky around him blushing pink in the emergent morning, the breeze ruffling the tall grass around his legs and the hair on his head. His eyes watched Ronan approach.

No manicured gardens at the Institute, or wide flat plains in Virginia could rival the wildness and beauty of Adam in that moment.

“You don’t know how to get me out of here, do you?” Adam said suddenly, and Ronan nearly tripped on his way up the rise. 

He paused in his movement instead, grimaced, and continued on slower than before. “No. The witches aren’t even sure how this happened. Their scrying is being blocked.”

“ _What?_ ” Adam’s eyes widened and he stared as Ronan came to stand in front of him. “That’s not good.”

Ronan snorted. “Yeah, no shit.”

“No, Ronan,” he said, voice low and careful, “the Deans are some of the most powerful time seers in history. Their power is like mine, it’s old school. Blocking them is like… it should be _impossible_. What the hell kind of thing could do that?” Adam’s eyes darted around, like he was searching the space around them for answers.

“My money’s on the freaky bug people,” Ronan said, but absently, he was too concerned with the way Adam looked so unsure, now. “Look,” he said, “whatever is going on back on Earth, you’re safe here, okay? I know that inside my head probably isn’t the healthiest place to be, but at least if you’re here, nothing can get to you.”

“Yeah. Unless it gets to you, first,” Adam said, cutting. He wasn’t wrong. Ronan knew from experience what happened to dream things when the dreamer was gone, the vacancy and impoverishment of life. When his father died it was like someone had pulled the plug out of the wall on everything he’d ever created. The animals and Ronan’s mother alike fell under some sick Sleeping Beauty spell. He didn’t want to think about what destruction would happen in this dream place if he wasn’t here to dream it.

Shit. He was going to have to be careful, now. He was going to have to give half a damn about whether or not something took him out. For Adam’s sake. 

This is exactly the kind of responsibility he never wanted. 

Adam’s expression turned furtive, and he glanced at Ronan from the corner of his eye before looking away. “Be careful, Ronan,” he said quietly, then folded himself down on the ground, legs crossed and spine lax. It wasn’t said selfishly, wasn’t a _take care of me or else_ ; it was worried, like Adam thought he’d put a target on Ronan’s back and was shamed by it.

Ronan collapsed beside him, legs thrown out across the grass, flattening it without care and leaning back on his elbows. “So no more drag racing, then?” he grinned. 

Adam sent him a stunningly flat look. “I’m serious.”

“Oh, right,” he nodded. “Of course. So like, I should watch my cholesterol, too? Maybe eat a vegetable?” Adam’s face only grew more unimpressed. “I guess base jumping is out of the question.” 

“Ugh!” Adam finally broke, and pushed at Ronan’s shoulder so hard he tipped sideways and fell onto the grass, chuckling without apology. “You’re an asshole,” Adam groused.

“I have an established brand, okay, you gotta be consistent.” Ronan sprawled out in the grass, the line between forced and genuine humour blurring as he smiled over at Adam’s irritated frown. From the outside, one might have said that he’d actually made Adam angry. But being annoyed at Ronan was one of Adam Parrish’s favourite past times and Ronan didn’t see why he should be deprived, now. 

“That’s the most Gansey thing you’ve ever said.” At least Adam was starting to smile.

“Hey now, the poor guy’s doing some ‘beautiful mind’ shit to try and figure out how to get you back, don’t point out his flaws.” Adam looked a little surprised at that, but quickly recovered to smile, open and languid.

“Nerd,” he said, and for some reason the tone was so perfect, so spot on to how he’d been countless times before in their classes together and when they hung out at lunch, that Ronan let out a helpless cry of laughter.

Adam smiled at him, pleased, and reclined back to lie beside Ronan in the grass. It was well into morning now, though the colours were still pale instead of the vivid hues of midday. If he ignored their surroundings and focused on the sky, Ronan could imagine that it was any one of the mornings at the Institute before class, that he could turn his head and Adam would be in his uniform, disciplined and ordered instead of wild and bright. 

“This is what we’re like in the real world.” Adam turned to him with a confused look and Ronan gestured to the way their bodies were arranged, side by side. “I’m asleep in the bed next to you, back in the medical wing.”

Adam seemed particularly interested by that. But he asked instead, “Is it weird for you? Coming here and seeing me?”

Ronan played with the leather bands around his wrist, where his hands lay above his head. “Probably should be. But you kind of fit in, here. I’ve spoken to people in here before but they’ve always been people I dreamed up, even if they were based on someone real. You, though, it’s like…” as he tried to gather his words, Adam turned fully on his side to await them, and Ronan felt his ears go a little warm at the attention. They were uncommonly close, enough to see the pale freckles on Adam’s bare shoulder. “You feel like the forest. I didn’t put you here on purpose. You’re just here.”

Adam nodded, seeming satisfied, but he didn’t roll away, just took some deep breaths like the breeze was clarifying for him.

They lay there for a long time, Ronan couldn’t say exactly, but the sun had passed the midpoint in the sky when he felt himself start to drift away. They talked intermittently, teased in turns, but the air had grown warmer with the sun and made the muted colours around them even hazier, so they mostly just lounged. Ronan was usually calmer in his dreams, his lounging in the real world always cut with an undercurrent of cynicism or irritation. But he didn’t usually have company, and he found himself trying to hold onto his calm for longer so that Adam would be content to lie beside him just a little longer, too. When he started to grow hazy, eyelids growing heavy, he felt a little mournful. 

“I’ll be back soon,” he said, strong and sure, wanting to impress it upon Adam that he regretted wasting his time, before.

“You don’t have to,” Adam said easily, concedingly.

“I’ll want to,” Ronan replied with certainty. For a second he saw Adam’s returning smile, bright and clear, and then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, comments and kudos absolutely make my day, so I'll love you forever if you leave some.
> 
> Please stay tuned for the next part! It's going to be great.
> 
> And if you want to watch me get attached to fictional characters, kick life in the balls and swear a lot, check out my [tumblr](http://ridleymocki.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it so far! Subscribe to be sure to catch the next part. 
> 
> Kudos are love, comments are life, and either will earn you lots of good will from me.
> 
> If you want to see me flail about life and fandom, hop over to my [tumblr](http://ridleymocki.tumblr.com)
> 
> And check out the other contributors to Pynch Week! It's a glorious time to be alive and ignore the real world.


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